Someone to Hold
by naleys
Summary: It took Peeta and Katniss time to come back to each other, but they were all the other needed. ONE SHOT.


It had been a long day. Not that there were many short days any more for Peeta or any of the citizens of Panem. The rebuilding process was always going to be long, and although they had managed to reconstruct admirably from what was left of District 12 after the bombing in the four years since the war had ended, there was still much to be done and Peeta spent most of his time helping with what was left of the efforts. The bakery was yet to be finished, as re-construction had been halted to allow Peeta time to come back to himself. It was safe to say that he had taken time. A lot of it.

Truth be told, he still wasn't completely back to himself. The nightmares were worse than ever, the visions of losing Katniss morphing with visions of Katniss attacking him, Katniss the mutt. He sometimes woke up and still saw her, the beautiful, weary woman lying next to him, as the image of her they had planted in his head back in the Capitol. Sometimes he still had the urge to wrap his hands around her throat and choke her, to attack her, but he was getting better at controlling it, getting used to the painful contortions his body sometimes performed as he tried to resist the fake images in his own mind. It was a slow process though, and every minute was excruciating.

He had been returned to District 12 on a train by himself a year after most people had left 13 to return to their respective Districts. Whilst they began to readjust to their new lives and the new way of living the war had brought about, Peeta had been bounced between a hospital in 2 and a psychiatrist in 13 being fed bits of information they had gleaned from the friends he had left in 12 about his childhood, about his family that were no longer alive, to try and help him sort out his brain, the mess that the Captiol had made of it. Eventually it had worked enough for them to send him back home, to the District he grew up in. He still wasn't right, even then.

At first he moved into a separate house from Katniss, the house that would have been his if they hadn't been keeping up the pretence of being a couple after they won the Games originally. He had seen her only when their paths crossed on their ways out of their houses, and he had had limited contact with anyone. Most of his days had been spent sitting staring blankly into space. There had one afternoon where he had tried to bake something, a loaf of bread if his memory served him correctly, and the dough had not risen, the crust had burnt and the inside had been harder than a rock. He had burned his arms severely getting it out of the oven and then thrown it at a wall and screamed, screamed because he could feel everything he had been slipping away from him, could feel it hanging in the air in front of him but just out of his reach. Of course Katniss heard his yelling, of course she came.

She had taken him back to hers where there was actually food in the kitchen and medical supplies in the cupboards. She had cooled his burns and applied some kind of past that had obviously been left behind by her mother that soothed and numbed his skin almost immediately, she hadn't asked about the mess of the kitchen she'd surely seen or how he had managed to burn almost all the skin on his forearms just retrieving something from an ordinary oven… but she had held him. When she had finished tending to his burns and checking him over to make sure he had done no further damage to himself she had taken him in her arms silently, and that was how they had stayed.

It was a long process for both of them to trust each other fully again, but he helped her deal with her grief for her sister, Finnick, everyone they had lost, and she helped him deal with his episodes. She told him "Real" or "Not real", he planted Primroses around her house. She held him as he gripped the back of a chair, he held her as she cried. She helped him as he took his first proper loaf of bread out of the oven, he helped her begin to write in the book of herbs and plants, the one that held so much sentimental value for her, and now for both of them. They would talk for hours, getting to know each other again the long way, the hard way, and eventually he would stay the night and they would soothe each other's nightmares. He didn't move in over night but more and more of his stuff was left there each time he visited until he woke up one morning and found there was nothing left in his own house to go back for.

They fell into a more casual routine then they had ever had before, she would allow him to kiss her at random moments, she would lay a hand on his shoulder when they stood together or curl into him when they sat on the sofa. They continued to play Real or Not real, and eventually he asked her that one question, the question he hadn't know the answer to himself until very recently. "You love me, real or not real?" her answer had only solidified what they already had. Things were getting better every day, and it was because they had each other.

He lay beside her now, woken from his light sleep by his own visions, trying to stop the shaking of his arms. He found himself in control, breathing deeply and calming himself down. Now everything was still again and he could relax into the mattress, turning his head to observe the sleeping form beside him. He was tired himself but closing his eyes again felt like too much of a risk and he contended himself with watching Katniss in her sleep. Her chest rose and fell with each breath she took, her arms crossed across her stomach and strands of her dark hair falling in her face as her eyelids fluttered in what Peeta hoped was a dream.

He reached across the bed to gently push her hair out of her eyes, and she reacted almost instantly to his touch, her body turning to him. But the movement wasn't natural or peaceful, it was jerky and panicked and Peeta knew that he could hope all he wanted but the pictures that were playing inside of Katniss' head right now were no more dreamlike than the ones that had woken him up less than half an hour ago.

Katniss' leg kicked out and Peeta frowned, the lines between his eyebrows only getting deeper as a low moan was emitted from the lips of the girl lying across from him. He pushed himself up on the bed and reached out a hand to her arm, holding on gently whilst his thumb smoothed the skin of her upper arm in a circular motion. His other hand found it's way to her face, cupping her cheek as he tried to gently wake her. "Katniss… Kat… wake up." The only response this elicited was more thrashing from the girl and a choked sob-like sound, and Peeta's chest ached as he slid his hand under her thin form and drew her up from the mattress and into the solid warmth of his body, wrapping his arms around her to stop her from thrashing and burying his face in the top of her head as he tried to soothe her, whispering "It's okay, I'm here." into her hair and stroking her cheek with one of his hands. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."


End file.
